Examples

The classic 1980's X-Men Brood storyline. The Death World surrounding one of the alien bases is in fact the semi-decomposed corpse of one of the Space Whales they had enslaved as Living Ships. To give an idea of the scale, the tips of the ribs poke out of the planetary atmosphere.

Beautiful Darkness is about a community of fairies living in the corpse of a little girl who got lost in the woods and died. (Provides the page image)

The protagonist of Angel Notes lives in a city built in and around the corpse of the Ultimate Life Form of Venus, which came to Earth to punish humanity for destroying Earth's spirit, Gaia, and with it, Earth's capacity to support life. Humans managed to kill it, however, and discovered that while Earth cannot support agriculture anymore, Venus still can, so they settled the alien's corpse and grow crops on it in order to survive.

Played with in Alan Dean Foster's short story "Gift of a Useless Man", in which a space traveller who crashes on an alien planet and is left almost completely paralysed enters a symbiotic relationship with a telepathic, sentient, insect colony, which could have been played for Body Horror but ends up sweet.

The protagonist of Ender's Game accidentally creates one of these, with the corpse of a giant he killed in a video game eventually becoming a village.

One of the setting's nastier abominations is Atropus, the world born dead, a planet crawling with undead whose arrival in a system heralds disaster and that only leaves dead worlds in its wake. It's fairly consistent that it's the remains something huge and (un)dead, but its exact nature varies — sometimes it's an enormous atropal (the undead corpse of a stillborn god), while other times it's the head of a colossal primordial being.

The current incarnation of the sixth layer of Hell, Malbolge, is formed out of the corpse of its former ruler, Malagard the Hag Countess. Its mountains, for instance, used to be the Hag Countess' bones, and there is a tunnel that used to be her throat that still contracts and expands rhythmically.

The Githyanki capital of Tu'narath is a metropolis built on — and into — the colossal, petrified corpse of a forgotten god, adrift in the timeless Void Between the Worlds of the Astral Plane.

BIONICLE: In "The Kingdom" Alternate dimension, Mata Nui, who is usually a Genius Loci, dies after Matoro fails to revive him, causes a large exodus nearly every being inside him to the island above due to Pit Mutagen flooding most domes inside.

Fallen London is in "the Neath", which if the story can be believed, is inside the skull of a dead god.

Brütal Legend is set in a world created from the remains of the Eternal Firebeast Ormagoden, who was killed by the primordial First Ones and whose flesh/bones and blood became the landmasses and the oceans of the world, respectively.

Masser and Secunda, the moons of the world in Elder Scrolls. Not mentioned in lore as inhabited but are halves of Lorkhan's corpse.

1/0: In the beginning, the webcomic consists of an infinite blank white void. Then Teddy Weddy (a character from Sluggy Freelance) falls out of the sky, and dies. The rest of the story focuses on the strange, tiny creatures who find him and build a village on his corpse.

Brutal Legend is set in a world created from the remains of the Eternal Firebeast Ormagoden, who was killed by the primordial First Ones and whose flesh/bones and blood became the landmasses and the oceans of the world, respectively.

The protagonist of Angel Notes lives in a city built in and around the corpse of the Ultimate Life Form of Venus, which came to Earth to punish humanity for destroying Earth's spirit, Gaia, and with it, Earth's capacity to support life. Humans managed to kill it, however, and discovered that while Earth cannot support agriculture anymore, Venus still can, so they settled the alien's corpse and grow crops on it in order to survive.

The Farscape episode "Home on the Remains" is set in a space "mining" colony that is actually looking for valuable substances in the corpse of an asteroid-sized Space Whale.

Played with in Alan Dean Foster's short story "Gift of a Useless Man", in which a space traveller who crashes on an alien planet and is left almost completely paralysed enters a symbiotic relationship with a telepathic, sentient, insect colony.

BIONICLE: In "The Kingdom" Alternate dimension, Mata Nui, who is usually a Genius Loci, dies after Matoro fails to revive him, causes a large exodus nearly every being inside him to the island above due to Pit Mutagen flooding most domes inside.

One of the setting's nastier abominations is Atropus, the world born dead, a planet crawling with undead whose arrival in a system heralds disaster and that only leaves dead worlds in its wake. It's fairly consistent that it's the remains something huge and (un)dead, but its exact nature varies — sometimes it's an enormous atropal (the undead corpse of a stillborn god), while other times it's the head of a colossal primordial being.

The current incarnation of the sixth layer of Hell, Malbolge, is formed out of the corpse of its former ruler, Malagard the Hag Countess. Its mountains, for instance, used to be the Hag Countess' bones, and there is a tunnel that used to be her throat that still contracts and expands rhythmically.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy